GROWTH AND HABITATS
They are trees, shrubs, or climbers, growing erect or spreading out with ribbed branches; they are the tallest and largest of the Cactaceæ. The flowers are funnel-form, some are elongated and very showy, and we find that they bloom mostly in the darkness of the desert night. Perhaps this night blooming accounts for the softness and brilliance of their delicate colorings, as of the orchids, the most gorgeous of which as you know come from the deep shaded forests of the South American jungles. The genus Cereus is very large, comprising more than two hundred varieties. Their native habitats are in South America, Central America, the West Indies, Mexico, and southern United States.
Caterpillar Cactus (Cereus eruca)
Lower California, Magdalena Island
The first of these growths to attract our attention is the weird Creeping Devil cactus! How apropos is this nomenclature! We see it here in Lower California, Cereus eruca, creeping along the coastal lands and over the fine drifted sands of the seashore like countless thousands of caterpillars crawling over the ground, worming their way slowly across the sandy plains to the sea. This remarkable cactus grows on the coastal plains of Lower California and is abundant on Magdalena Island in very sandy soil, preferring the softer sand for its habitat and particularly the wind-drifted material, over small areas of which it forms a more or less continuous covering, broken here and there by dead stems. In the clumps of this cactus the desert foxes live; for in its natural habitat it prevents the sand from drifting and offers homes for the little animals of the region.
The stems lie flat on the ground with their tips somewhat upturned, thus resembling huge caterpillars, head and body; they grow along on the ground, rooting from their lower surfaces, elongating at the tips, and dying back behind, which results in a slow forward movement of the whole plant. When this cactus meets with a log or stone the stem with its upraised tip gradually grows over this hindrance, up one side and down the other, and by the dying back of the rear end, in time passes over the obstruction. The stems, varying from three to nine feet in length and nearly as large as a man’s arm, are very spiny, with fifteen to twenty radial and central thorns of a dark brownish hue and dull tan, turning to grayish white with age, the tips translucent yellow. The flowers are bright yellow, the fruit delicious and relished by Indians and Mexicans both as a salad and as a preserve.
Senita (Cereus Schottii)
Lower California, Sonora, and Southwestern Arizona
SENITA, ZINA, OR SINA (Cereus Schottii)